Resident planned to include in his book the pictures of the restored “Death Register” - Enquiry Case Notes

No： 0025/2011/RP

Title： Resident planned to include in his book the pictures of the restored “Death Register”

Content：

　　Since Resident X planned to include in his book the pictures of the restored “Death Register” (in the total of nineteen), and some of these pictures may involve personal privacy, X asked for GPDP’s opinions whether showing these pictures would violate Law 8/2005 (the Personal Data Protection Act).

Result：

　　GPDP believed that, according to the information provided by Bureau X, data in the said “Death Register” includes the deceased persons’ names, names of his parents, gender, age, marital status, birthplace, occupation, nationality, address, time of death, cause of death, and so forth. According to the Civil Code, the concept of “natural person” excluded anyone who is deceased. Therefore, in general, “personal data” determined by the Personal Data Protection Act does not apply to the data of the deceased. In other words, such information is not regulated by the said Law. However, if what contained in the “Death Register” relates to the data of any living persons, such as the names of the deceased persons’ alive parents, in accordance with Articles 4(1)(1) and 3(1), processing of which could be regulated by the same Law.
　　In addition, regarding the aforementioned, GPDP also received a letter from X, in which he expressed that the personal data of the persons found in the said Registers were not involved in the book he intended to publish. In addition, the words in the said pictures were almost illegible, since the Portuguese words therein were blurred.

Reference：
Please refer to "Personal Data Protection Act", articles 3，4 .

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